Wesley Corpus

DEAR JEMMY, -- You seem to forget what I told you: (1) that, being unwilling to speak against Predestination, we appealed to God, and I was by lot commanded to preach and print against it [See letter of April 30.]; (2) that, the very first time I preached against it explicitly, the power of God so fell on those that heard as we have never known before, either in Bristol or London or elsewhere. Yet generally I speak on faith, remission of sins, and the gift of the Holy Ghost. Our brother Seward promised to give us five hundred or a thousand Homilies to give away. These are better than all our sermons put together. Adieu! Brother Hutton, you are desired to send our brother Wesley six of Dr. James Knight's [See letter of Jan. 13, 1735.] Sermons (Vicar of St. Sepulchre's) as soon as you can. It would be better to send our brother Wesley's sermons on Faith. They are the best to lay the foundation. To his Brother Samuel BRISTOL, May 10, 1739. DEAR BROTHER, -- The having abundance of work upon my hands is only a cause of my not writing sooner. The cause was rather my unwillingness to continue an unprofitable dispute. The gospel promises to you and me, and our children, and all that are afar off, even as many of those whom the Lord our God shall call as are not disobedient unto the heavenly vision, 'the witness of God's Spirit with their spirit that they are the children of God’ [See letters of Nov. 30, 1738, and Jan. 1739.]; that they are now at this hour all accepted in the Beloved: but it witnesses not that they shall be. It is an assurance of present salvation only; therefore not necessarily perpetual, neither irreversible. I am one of many witnesses of this matter of fact, that God does now make good this His promise daily, very frequently during a representation (how made I know not, but not to the outward eye) of Christ either hanging on the cross or standing on the right hand of God. And this I know to be of God, because from that hour the person so affected is a new creature both as to his inward tempers and outward life. ‘Old things are passed away, and all things become new.’